Harvard University once again topped the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2026 (ARWU), known as the Shanghai Ranking. Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) followed. Fourth place was taken by Cambridge, fifth by the University of California at Berkeley.
The top ten also included Princeton — 6th place, Oxford — 7th, Columbia University — 8th, the University of Chicago — 9th, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) — 10th. Thus, eight of the ten best universities in the world are located in the USA, two more are in Great Britain.
The composition of the top ten has not changed compared to 2025, but there have been some reshuffles. Princeton rose from seventh to sixth, passing Oxford, and the University of Chicago rose from tenth to ninth, swapping positions with Caltech. Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Cambridge and Berkeley retained the first five places.
The best university outside the USA and Great Britain was the French Paris-Saclay University - 13th place. The best university in Asia — China's Tsinghua University — rose to 18th place. ETH Zurich is ranked 19th, Peking University is 22nd, and the University of Toronto and Zhejiang University share 24th place.
Despite the dominance of American universities at the top of the ranking, the most noticeable long-term trend is the strengthening of China.
In the first hundred of ARWU 2026, the USA is represented by 37 universities, mainland China already has 16 compared to 13 a year earlier, Great Britain - at eight It is followed by Australia and Switzerland - five universities each, France and Germany - four each, Canada - three.
In general, universities from 18 countries and territories are represented in the first hundred. At the same time, China's position is rapidly strengthening: back in ARWU 2025, mainland China had 13 universities in the top 100, now there are already 16. Southeast University, Tianjin University and Harbin Institute of Technology, in particular, were included in the new top 100.
But the situation in the entire published thousand is even more revealing. Mainland China is represented by 234 universities compared to 187 in the US. Thus, China already significantly surpasses the US in terms of breadth of presence in the ARWU, although American universities still maintain a huge advantage directly at the top of the ranking.
France has 27 universities in the top 1000, four of them in the top hundred. In addition to Paris-Saclay in 13th place, PSL University ranks 33rd, Sorbonne University - 55th, Université Paris Cité - 57th.
ARWU evaluates more than 2,500 universities in the world, but publishes only the first thousand. Unlike rankings that take into account reputation among students and employers, internationalization or the quality of the educational environment, the Shanghai ranking is almost entirely focused on scientific activity.
The methodology takes into account graduates and employees — laureates of the Nobel Prize and the Fields Medal, the most cited researchers of Clarivate, publications in Nature and Science, the number of scientific works in the Web of Science indexes, and the indicator of scientific productivity per staff. Therefore, ARWU is actually primarily a ranking of the research power of universities, and not the quality of education as such.
Not a single university from Ukraine appeared in this ranking.
Source — ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, Academic Ranking of World Universities 2026, published on August 15, 2026.
